House of Green Turf

down to the Salvation Army shelter by the embankment, where they had a permanent collecting-box on the wall outside, in the form of a giant tambourine, with his favourite appeal written across it in large, cheerful characters: HELP UP THE DOWN-BUT-NOT-OUTS. He pulled out the untidy wad of notes from his pocket, and stuffed them anyhow through the slot.

A disinterested-looking man sauntering past with his eyes apparently on the river took in this surprising act, and loitered to lean on the rail and the embankment and think it over, as Francis stalked away.

George Felse had been following him ever since he had shouldered his way through the revolving doors of the Lion Hotel and butted savagely through the traffic into the church opposite. It was a chance meeting only, in fact George was on his way to the car-park where he had left his car. But the apparition of Bunty’s visitor, back from Austria and striding stony-faced and hot-eyed away from an encounter with his principal, had lured him out of his course. Everybody knew from the local evening paper that Maggie Tressider had taken a suite at the Lion; and by this time George had studied Francis Killian’s photograph too thoughtfully to miss that face when he saw it cross the pavement in front of him. First the almsboxes in the church, and now this startling treatment of a fistful of money. And the desolation and rage in the worn, illusionless face. It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions. It takes a touch of madness to make most people throw money away.

George walked to his car slowly and thoughtfully. Whatever Maggie Tressider’s commission had been, it looked as if it was over. And there at the Salvation Army shelter her agent had jettisoned his pay, in anger and offence. Was it possible that Bunty had been right about him? Had he a far larger stake at risk?

And might it not be well worth while, so far as other duties allowed, continuing this unofficial watch upon him? In fact, upon both of them?

It was on Saturday, the fourteenth of September, that Laura Howard telephoned from the B.E.A. office.

‘Bunty? Something rather intriguing—if you’re still interested in your party? He looked in yesterday afternoon, and asked me to do exactly what you asked me to do! He wants to know if Maggie Tressider books a passage anywhere. He knows I shouldn’t do it but he was in dead earnest. And of course, I didn’t promise, not exactly, but remembering what you said last time… Well, I didn’t say I wouldn’t, either. I thought I’d better consult you, and see what was on. Because, you see, she has! This morning! She rang up and wanted a passage to Zurich next Wednesday, and I’ve got one for her on the 16.10 from Heathrow.’

Bunty had waved George over long before this point, and his head was inclined intently beside her own, listening to the distant clacking with ears stretched.

‘Well, I mean, Maggie Tressider! But he seems on the level, and he says he’s been working for her. Has he?’

‘Yes,’ said Bunty, ‘that’s right, he has.’

‘Then what do I do? Should I let him know?’

‘Ask her,’ hissed George, ‘if there’s another flight to Zurich the same day.’

‘Hallo… Laura? Is there another flight that same day?’

‘Lots… 10.10, 10.50, 14.10… and tourist night flights, of course…’

‘Tell him,’ breathed George, ‘and a thousand to one he’ll be on one of ’em if there’s a vacancy.’

‘Yes, Laura, tell him. He’s O.K. And Laura… let me know if he books a crossing for himself, will you?’

‘Oh, well,’ said Laura philosophically, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound. O.K., I’ll call him. And I’ll call you, double-quick, if there’s any trouble.’ She rang off.

Bunty cradled the ’phone, and gazed, round-eyed at George over it. ‘Now what’s going on? It doesn’t make sense for him to be peering round corners and suborning B.E.A. employees to find out what his own client’s up to. He can’t have been lying about working for her, because he wasn’t at all worried about the possibility that I might pop out and buy some flowers and go round to the Royal to visit her. In fact he suggested it. And plenty of people would have, especially after being told she’d remembered them. Now it seems he’s expecting her to go running out there herself, and not to say anything to him about it. So what is going on?’

‘I rather think,’ said George, ‘that they’ve parted brassrags.’ He recounted the incident of the Salvation Army shelter. ‘It looks as if he brought something back with him, and something that got him paid off and sent about his business. And somehow I don’t think it was book material about Paul Fredericks, do you? Anyhow, he wasn’t a bit happy about the result, you should have seen his face! And he certainly got rid of her money so fast it might have been scalding him. But now it does seem that he hasn’t exactly accepted his dismissal, doesn’t it? Far from it, he’s still going to be bloodhounding along after her wherever she goes, unless I miss my guess. Only this time unknown to her, and unpaid.’

‘I told you,’ said Bunty, ‘he’s in love with her. If she’s going to walk head-on into trouble, he’s going to be on the spot to pull her out of it.’

‘And you think she is going to be walking into trouble?’ demanded George, of himself at least as much as of his wife.

‘It looks as if he thinks so. And after all, he’s the only one who knows what he found there, isn’t he?’

‘You’re so right,’ agreed George ruefully. ‘I only wish he wasn’t. I’d give a good deal to be in the know myself.’ He sat mute for a few moments, his eyes fixed on Bunty in bright speculation; she knew him so well that she could almost see him making up his mind. ‘Bunty, how would you like a few days in the Vorarlberg?’

‘Us?’ she said, startled. ‘You and me? You mean follow them over and keep an eye on them?’

“If he decides to go after her. Yes, you and me—why not? I’ve still got a week of leave to take, some time, why not now and why not in Scheidenau? If nothing comes of it, we’ve lost nothing and had a holiday. And if something does come of it, if he’s turned up something about the disappearance of your young Aylwin… Well, who knows? If we roll one more stone over we may find Peter Bromwich, too. I’d give a good deal to close that case.’

‘We couldn’t travel on the same flight with either of them,’ pointed out Bunty. ‘He’d know me, for certain. And she just might.’

‘I was thinking rather of hopping over with one of the tourist night flights, ahead of them. They won’t all be fully